Tariffs: contrasting responses from shoe supplier countries
China is to impose new tariffs of 34% on all imports with a US origin. The ministry of commerce and the country’s customs authorities announced the new tariffs in a joint statement on April 4.
They said the measures were in response to additional tariffs that the US imposed on imports from China on April 2. The US put the new, additional tariffs on Chinese exports at the same level, 34%.
Vietnam’s immediate response to being hit with tariff levels of 46% on its exports to the US has been to ask for a delay in their imposition to allow time for talks.
The government in Hanoi said on April 4 that it had already been in contact with officials at the office of the US Trade Representative to ask for time to negotiate a settlement.
The director of Vietnam’s overseas markets development department, Dr Nguyen Hoang Long, said in comments to local media that Vietnam and the US have complementary economies, and that the trade structures of the two countries do not compete directly.
The goods exported by Vietnam to the US mainly compete for a share of the US market with products from third countries, Dr Long said, rather than with US companies.
Tariffs that the US announced on April 2 came into effect on April 5. In comments since then, President Donald Trump has demonstrated little willingness to negotiate, with Vietnam or anyone else. In a comment on April 6 about falling share prices on stock markets around the world, the president said: “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
In recent years, exports from China and Vietnam have come to account for 70% of all footwear imports into the US, according to figures shared by the US International Trade Commission.
Image Vietnam News Agency.
